While the Coronavirus pandemic has caused unemployment rate to soar throughout the world, the rich continue to get richer even in these uncertain times. Joining that expanding billionaire list however, is a rare entrant. Current Apple CEO Tim Cook, has managed to join the ranks of the three comma club as Apple reaches a market value of nearly $2 trillion.
The fact comes to light via a new Bloomberg analysis. According to the report, Tim Cook was awarded a massive award of restricted shares on his first day as CEO. The actual equity gets credited to the former COO in annual increments, under the condition that Apple’s stock outperforms at least two-thirds of firms in the S&P 500. Now, Tim already owns 847,969 shares directly, or about 0.02% of Apple shares, worth around $375 million. Factoring in proceeds from previous share sales, dividends and other compensation adds another $650 million to his net worth. This puts him really close to cracking the 10 figure mark already.
However, barring any major dry spell for the company’s finances, Apple will outperform 2/3rds of firms this year as well, which means Tim is about to see another 560,000 shares coming into his bank account later this month. This would roughly translate to another $100 million addition to his net worth and thus, by the end of August 2020, Tim Cook should be a billionaire.
Now, there is one big ‘If’ attached to this claim. Tim Cook has said it before, that he plans to give most of his fortune away and has already gifted million of dollars worth of Apple shares. Thus, if the CEO had made some donations under the radar, the aforementioned calculations will fail.
Nonetheless, this is a very impressive feat for Tim Cook, especially considering that he is not the original founder of the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. Usually, founders of big companies are the ones who make it this big, including Jeff Bezos ($187 billion), Bill Gates ($121 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($102 billion) and Elon Musk ($68.7 billion). Still, as you can notice, he stands nowhere near Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who by the way, joined him for a Congress hearing last month.
Talking about the Congress hearing, this new achievement might just make things a little harder for the CEO, who is already being accused of breaching antitrust laws to suppress competition.
